MINERALOGICAL
STUDIES ON THE COASTAL SAND
DUNES SEDIMENT AT BALUZA-ROMMANA AREA, SINAI,
EGYPT.
GOODA A. DABBOUR
, 1ABDEL MONEM M. OSMAN, MOSTAFA E.
MOSTAEA , SALAH S. EL BALAKSSY and AHMED H. A. HASSAAN
Nuclear Materials Authority,
Cairo; 1 Ain shams University,Cairo |
The grain size of the detritus composing the sand dunes sediment in the study area covers the five sand size classes with the modal class generally lies in the medium sand size. The grain size analysis of the heavy minerals in these sediments proves their presence also in all the sand sizes but the modal class lies in the fine sand size. The average heavy minerals content in these sediments is about 1.61%. About one-fifth of the heavy minerals have economic importance. These are magnetite, ilmenite, rutile, zircon, garnet and traces of monazite.
The studied magnetite and Imenite particles exhibit lamellae of ilmenite, ulvspinel, hematite and sphene as intergrowths . Magnetite is of the titaniferous type. Ilmenite contains titanium of 48.61%, which make it better than Rosetta beach ilmenite. Rutile attains the deep red, yellowish brown and reddish brown color beside opaque particles. Some of its particles contain inclusions of zircon. The colorless water clear zircon represents 86.73% of the total zircon. Other colored particles display inclusions of apatite, zircon and iron oxide. The main elongation ratio of the zircon particles ranges from 1.0 to 2.0 (85.71% of the particles). Hf content is about 1.29% with Hf/Zr ratio of 0.019. The Th/U ratio is about 0.5. The garnet particles are mainly almandine and spessartine. They contain inclusions of magnetite and ilmenite.
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